Internet governance roundtable at #cnbloggercon 2008

English version of the powerpoint presentation given at the Internet Governance roundtable held at the 2008 Chinese Blogger Conference

Venue B, session B0, 11:00am-12:00pm, Saturday, November 15

Slide 1. Do you know who's in charge of you online?

Slide 2. 'Who watches over the watchers?'*

Slide 3. Wikipedia blurb on ICANN

Slide 4. More on ICANN

-it's a wealthy organisation

-around 105 staff

-the phases in which different gTLDs were unleashed

-: Should we be thinking about the ones yet to come?

Slide 5. What is CNNIC and what do they do?

Slide 6. ICANN vs. CNNIC

-: sex...religion...should regional concerns about "moral order" be ICANN's concern?

-: who is suited to define "moral order" anyway?

-Charles Mok on Hong Kong's Obscene Articles Tribunal

Slide 7.

-original intent of internet by those who built it

-keeping internet structure neutral and depoliticized

-: who determines how neutral Net Neutrality should be?

-: what restrictions do netizens currently face for the purchase of:

-*.cn domains?

-*.中文 domains?

-how many of the relevant restrictions can you list? who creates those?

Slide 8. .cn vs .中国

-applicable policies for the registration of .cn domains

-: who will draft the equivalent policies for registration of .中国 domains?

-: why are individual netizens at present unable to buy '.中文' domains?

-: is there a monopoly when it comes to registering domains in China?

Slide 9.

-: who monitors groups like ICANN as the draft and pass policies related to domain name registration?

-: before CNNIC goes and makes '.中文' domains publicly purchasable, should we be watching as the respective regulations are drafted?

Slide 10. How is it that nobody has yet purchased 做爱网.com?

Slide 11. .XXX

-the American porn industry tried to buy it

-spent 25,000,000 USD in the process

-religious conservatives mobilized and got the Bush administration to lobby against it being sold

-went to ballot at ICANN in 1997 and the porn community lost by two votes.

Slide 12. .GAY

-in 2000 LGBTQ groups applied to buy .gay

-religious conservatives mobilized to fight it and ICANN in the end refused to sell it

Slide 13. .基

-more inclusive participation in these sorts of proceedings is extremely important for, again: who watches the watchers?

-: what if an LGBTQ group in GD province wanted to buy up .基 and Chinese Christians came out against it?

-: who will take care of these kinds of disputes in the future and what sort of procedure will they follow?

Slide 14: .ABC

-: should the American Broadcasting Company get it? Or the Australian Broadcasting Corporation?

Slide 15: decisions like this will be a lot more complicated if Chinese characters are involved

Slide 16: Do we even need more TLDs?

Slide 17: Yes.

-ICANN CEO Paul Twomey says so

-the internet needs to be sustained by further opportunities to create wealth, lest it fall back on government funding

Slide 18. Internet Society

Slide 19. What is ISOC and what does it do?

-once had exchange program with China

-no ISOC in China, only the knock-off, Internet Society of China (ISC)

Slide 20. What is ISC?

Slide 21. What is ISC? (cont'd.)

Slide 22. Judging from events in recent years, could the ISC really be said to have "promoted the healthy expansion of the internet in China"?

-when websites and blogs can disappear without any warning, will the ISC stand up for us and say No to people like the State Information Office and the Central Propaganda Dept.?

-why can't Chinese netizens then take part in an organisation such as ISOC?

Slide 23. Good news

-the three most influential people when it comes to the structure and policies of the internet and domain name registration in China are all women

-Yan Baoping (CNNIC)

-Hu Qiheng (ISC)

-Xue Hong (ALAC/ICANN)

Slide 24. Bad news

-ISC is not offically recognised by ISOC and ISOC has no Chinese staff

-so why can't Chinese netizens go and act as advisors or representatives of China?

Slide 25. Because if you read the fine print, no foreign organisations are allowed to expand inside China

-is that cool?

Slide 26. The result?

-Not a single ISOC chapter in China

Slide 27. Which is too bad because the things ISOC members can do are quite interesting:

-support development of standards and protocols

-promote public policy/make your voice heard

-make a difference with education and training

-directly support the programs you choose

Slide 28. However...

-there is someone from China on ISOC's Board of Trustees, that being CNNIC's Yan Baoping mentioned above

Slide 29. What you could ostensibly do:

-apply to be a member of ISOC is free (and applying as an individual is okay)

-get together with people of similar interest to set up an ISOC (note: not ISC) chapter; although quite easy, in theory it's not allowed

-get together with people in your [province/city/town] to set up an ISOC chapter

-chapters must be volunteer initiatives

Slide 30. ISOC's main focus is on raising awareness of internet governance issues and has ample resources to that effect

Slide 31. Chairwoman of ISC is Hu Qiheng (even though not officially recognized overseas, domestically it is however the boss)

Slide 32. Does ISC fulfill its duties?

-it's at least semi-transparent

-only those approved by the government may become members

Slide 33. So just what does China's ISC do?

-Voluntary Self-Discipline Pact

Slide 34. ICANN also has channels for participation such as the At-Large Committee (which Xue Hong is on)

-application is free and can be done via e-mail

Slide 35. [cont'd]

-however, the application form doesn't come in Chinese

-perhaps something for future volunteers to do

-in comparison, the only membership list to be found on the ISC website are those willingly taking part in the Self-Discipline Pact

Slide 36. Being a responsible netizen should not be called "self-discipline"

-for further comparison, dot.Asia (like CNNIC, a domain registry, except for greater Asia) not only welcomes members, but gives them voting privileges

-English-only, though

Slide 37. Why is participation in international organizations such as ISOC and ICANN so important?

-ICANN is preparing to launch internationalized (non-English) domain names next year

-if they mess that up, some non-English countries could go rogue and split from ICANN, changing the internet as we now know it

-the feedback period for ICANN's "fast-track" policy on approving internationalized (non-English) domains ended last month

Slide 38. Who pays attention to these issues?

Slide 39. The Global Network Initiative

Slide 40. Disclaimer

Slide 41. Future opportunities for involvement

-Internet Governance Forum 2008 is in India, December 2008

-information in six languages and several interactive channels will be provided

-contact me if you have any questions

Slide 42. ICANN 2009 will be in Mexico

Slide 43. Related articles

Slide 44. Most important:

-being a netizen is not just about Facebook, blogs and QQ

-the way the internet is structured is that it is we netizens who create it

-needs to stay that way

Reflections on #cnbloggercon (2)

Still being compiled, however, is a list of feedback provided from the larger community that attended the conference. Tentatively, that includes:

-the conference wifi was more of a loogie than an actual bubble;

-seemingly random rotation of emcees gave an air of disorganization;

-the audience at times got disorderly and out of control, especially that noisy bunch seated at the back as well as the presence of certain special guests which led to a spontaneously-organized not-so-covert counter-stakeout mission;

-noise from Venue A totally pwned people trying to speak in Venue B as the two were semi-connected;

-an unforgiving concrete floor was no good for those who don't like sitting on top of chairs;

-due to it not being announced or, along with all Venue B round-table discussions, even mentioned on the official program handout, the single by far most captivating session, the first at Venue B on the morning of the first day of the conference, went completely unattended!**

-no 'thank you' to attendees and sponsors at closing for making the entire event possible

Actually, judging strictly from the number of times it has been reposted and commented upon, we're probably looking at Yang Hengjun's conference-closing talk, 'We Chinese: Look, the Future!' as one of the most memorable, in which Yang touched on a number of topics: Obama, the importance of mothers, morality and recent internet hot topics and, mentioning Martin Luther King, Jr., the dreams we all share for the future: "Yes, we can!"

Liveblogging in English was done this year by the team at CN Reviews who managed to cover all the major bases.

There's that character we love to love elliott ng photo

From the front row to those who couldn't make it, the greater Asian perspective to the freshly local, they captured everything from the rational to the cynical about the conference, the personal:

"life is something like making a good meal, we need time to let it mature to make it taste really good."

...the motivational:

The laws in Egypt say that it can be considered treason even if you are telling the truth. Wael gets hidden camera videos of police brutality. And government corruption. A popular one is of a government person stuffing a ballot box during an election. He has millions of people who see these clips on YouTube of government corruption and policy brutality. One day YouTube mysteriously took them all down. And then when bloggers started to complain about it and NYT learned from the bloggers what had happened, they mysteriously reappeared.

...and then (as the conference's opening keynote) there was Anti:

Since 2000, especially on the Web, there has been tremendous media liberalization in China. There is indeed hope for the Chinese blogosphere. A key question is: will blogs have professionalism or not? Blogs could be considered as part of a free extension to the media.

...

Pluralism and sensible discussion is crucial...If we cannot express ourselves, and we still want to do a citizen society… something must give.

Must it! But what first...that general malaise? It's a long uphill battle of words for those on the 'change we can believe in' side of things, and those on the illiberal side have the advantage of their most worthy of opponents blipping silently off the network, or being sent to prison and ending up apprentice welders. The post-conference party (that was actually postponed a night because police called the venue and told them: desist) was peppered with shouts of 'Yes, we can!' and @zuola took his shirt off and jumped up on the table and did a bunch of push-ups, raising RMB 500 for 1kg.org in the process. Last year, Daxa got hammered and passed out; this year/that night, he says, he was only just, "tired". Beifeng kept organizing big-ass blogger feasts. TheCarol the Taiwan Twitter Queen brought her tweeps and held a Punch Party that everyone who went said made the whole weekend a blast. The Hong Kong delegation of twenty-something came with their own custom-made t-shirts and flooded Flickr with well-posed photos. Anti made his cnbloggercon debut and kept getting interviewed the whole way through. He Caitou and I had a nice, friendly chat. Even the police spy who stood out like a sore thumb started clapping at one point!

Getting a little excited here...

2006 was too business-y; last year was too PR-heavy; what some will most likely say about this year's event was that it was too unharmonious (actually, people were already Fanfouing that first thing in the morning on Day 1—it was held in Guangzhou, what else did you expect?). I think most people will stand by the line-up; in fact, one point that's already been made is that two obvious omissions this year were a) citizen journalism & grassroots media and b) bridgeblogging (yah!). Can't please everyone, and if you did they'd probably call you stale and move on. Given what little I contributed to organizing this over the past six months or so, I've been quite lucky to be a part of it, working with passionate, professional and very smart people who hold as a core value in approaching cnbloggercon that it's something that by definition has to keep updating itself in order to make any sense to others, managing to do so while upholding '2.0' in practice to every extent possible.

One last thing, some firsts in Guangzhou Bloggercon: an open-air venue, (mostly) simultaneous sessions, Zuola t-shirts, semi-virtual mingling space and something else just a wee bit innovative that should be ready by mid- to late January.

Reflections on #cnbloggercon (1)

LIU XIAOYUAN HAS A SERIES OF BLOG POSTS WHICH ARE EXTREMELY HARMFUL TO CHINA!

刘晓原博客系列文章对中国的危害非常巨大！ 我仔细查看了此人的几乎所有博客和文章的跟贴，发现这里已经成为反政府人士发泄不满的平台。

Liu Xiaoyuan has a series of blog posts which are extremely harmful to China! I read through almost all of this person's posts and the comments on them, and I can see that this blog has become a platform for anti-government types to spew their discontent!

这些言论极其无耻、卑鄙，对给中国人民带来巨大福祉的人民政府肆意诽谤。

必须对这些危险分子和言论进行严惩！

These dangerous elements and their speech must be strictly curbed!

在正义国民的强力呼吁下，搜狐网锁定隐藏了刘晓原博客十月十五日以来所写的二十篇谈杨佳案的博文（不包括十五日前隐藏的文章），新浪网也在下午删除了刘晓原博客四篇博文。这还不够，应该将此人以及所有发表过反政府言论的过激分子加入黑名单，强行关闭他们的所有博客，由国家安全局等部门对其进行调查！

Following the powerful calls from Our Just People, Sohu.com has screened all 20 Yang Jia blog posts that Liu Xiaoyuan has written since October 15 (not including the ones written prior to Oct. 15), and Sina.com has also deleted four posts from Liu Xiaoyuan's blog. This is not enough; all the extremists who have left anti-government comments ought to be put on the blacklist, and all of Liu Xiaoyuan's blogs ought to be forcefully closed and the National Security Bureau and other departments should begin investigating him!

对于那些曾经发表过反政府言论的人士，不能让他们进入政府部门和大型国企工作，网站有义务将其IP地址整理后提交公安机关和检察机关，其不良行为要记入个人档案。

As for those who have posting anti-government comments, we must not let them find work in government offices or large scale SOEs; websites have the obligation to collect their IP addresses and turn them over to the Public Security Bureau and prosecution agencies so their illicit behavior can go on record.

当今世界，有关部门要牢记那些西方反华势力时刻对我们虎视眈眈，绝不能让前苏联、东欧等和平演变的悲剧在中国重演。现在的公检法实在软弱，刘晓原博客及其一些网民的呼应，是对我国法制尊严和社会主义制度赤裸裸的挑衅，必须坚决打击！

In today's world, the relevant departments must remember that at this very moment there are those Western anti-China forces eyeing us like tigers; we must not allow for a re-enactment of the peaceful transitions that took place in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe to happen here in China. Today's public security organs truly are weak, and the calls from Liu Xiaoyuan and other netizens are a bald-faced provocation to the sanctity of Our Country's laws and Socialist System which must be resolutely struck down!

我认为：当前，恐怖主义、无政府主义、资产阶级自由化思潮，是我们国家面临的三大威胁。要在全国开展弘扬社会主义和爱国主义的教育，多宣传先进人物，多宣传奉献精神。

I feel that at present, terrorism, anarchy and the flood of bourgeois liberal thought are the three biggest threats our nation faces. Socialist and Patriotic education needs to be launched and carried out nationwide, as well as more emphasis on advanced persons and more emphasis on a spirit of dedication.

在宣传好的方面和打击坏人方面，两手都要硬。

Both hands must remain hard in the emphasizing of Good and the striking down of Bad People.

我中华民族历经磨难，好不容易达到现在的初步繁荣，21世纪中叶超过美帝，任重道远。绝不能自毁长城，自乱针脚！对于那些诋毁国家和政府的一切言论和行为，要坚决打击，毫不手软！只有这样，才能最大限度的保护老百姓的利益和国家利益。

Given the trials and tribulations the Chinese Nation has endured, it has not been easy to reach the current early stages of prosperity, and in order to surpass Imperialist America by the middle of the 21st Century, we must all shoulder heavy burdens. We must not see the Great Wall destroyed by our hands by letting ourselves come undone! As for all speech and behavior that denigrates our Nation and Government, we must strike hard and show no mercy! Only thus will we protect the interests of The Common People the Nation to the utmost.